The title of this post comes from the first faint glimmers of REAL journalism I see emanating from THE PULP, Missoula’s new opportunity to have a marginally informed public. What article has me hoping that something may come of this publication in its infancy? This one about the murder of Delphine Farmer, written by Jule Banville, someone I’ve spoken with before.
Maybe what I told Jule Banville about my suspicions regarding the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office inspired this journalist to be more curious about her own backyard. From the link:
Sixteen months ago—Sunday, Sept. 25, 2022—was the first day of the only homicide investigation led that year by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office. Little has been said about the murder of Delphine Farmer since.
A press release did go out that week. It let people know a reported assault in Clinton was being investigated as a homicide and that there were no threats to others near where it happened, which was inside Farmer’s house, a little over a mile up Donovan Creek Road. That’s about 20 miles from downtown Missoula, past the signs warning people that only residents should keep going up.
In October 2023, another press release stated there were “no new leads” in the case, more than a year after Farmer’s death.
A death certificate puts her death at around noon on Sept. 25, 2022, and its cause as multiple blunt force injuries. In another box on the form, it states, “decedent bludgeoned multiple times with an elk antler.”
That’s right, an elderly woman was brutally beaten to death with an antler, and 16 months later our local investigators seem incapable of making an arrest. Why? Here’s more from the article:
Search warrants, publicly filed, help fill in the narrative. Two deputies arrived around 12:30 p.m., after a 911 call where the man on the line said his sister had beaten their mother, badly, and she was unconscious. The deputies walked in to find an elderly woman on the floor, blood pooling around her head. They tried to revive her using CPR and a defibrillator and then called for medical backup. She was pronounced dead while the deputies talked to Farmer’s son and located his sister.
Farmer’s son told them his sister had gone to their brother’s house nearby. Google maps show his house sits behind their mom’s place, on the other side of Donovan Creek. When deputies went there, they learned Farmer’s daughter communicates with some American Sign Language and, mostly, in writing. They asked someone else for an overshirt she’d taken off in her brother’s house. It appeared to have blood on it. “It was also reported to deputies that [she] had a small cut on her forehead,” according to law enforcement documents filed in the case.
The Pulp is not naming the two siblings, who are named in the warrants, because they haven’t been charged. The sheriff’s office identified Farmer and gave her age.
Documents say Farmer’s son told deputies his sister “had beaten their mother with an antler.” A deputy “noticed an antler at the residence.” A search warrant for Farmer’s house lists a cribbage board punched into an antler, found in the kitchen sink.
From just this basic information, I can safely make the claim that we aren’t dealing with criminal masterminds here, more likely we’re dealing with behavior resulting from the classic combination of drugs and mental illness. So why hasn’t our Sheriff’s Office made an arrest SIXTEEN MONTHS LATER?
Well, The Pulp tried getting insight from the Sheriff’s Office, but this is how the lead Detective responded (emphasis mine):
The Pulp talked on the phone with and emailed general and specific questions to the lead detective on this case, Kelan Larson. He answered the email more than a week later by directing further questions to Public Information Officer Jeannette Smith.
Smith said there would be a meeting this week with county attorneys to decide what could be released about the Clinton homicide, but did not offer further comments. She wrote, “Please note that we have not stated, ‘no comment.’ Because this is an active and ongoing investigation there are specifics to the case that, if published, could jeopardize the investigation and any possible charges that may be brought in the future. Thus, our meeting on Thursday with the County Attorney’s office [is] to consider the questions you have posed and determine information that may be available to answer those questions.”
Smith also emailed statistics about homicide investigations. The sheriff’s office led one in 2022, confirmed as the death of Delphine Farmer, and one in 2023. The identity of the 2023 victim was not disclosed.
What the hell do STATS have to do with a particular CASE, Jeannette? Throwing out stats feels like a pathetic attempt to “handle”, not “inform”, a member of local media who, I will add, is doing something very unusual for those, and that’s ASKING QUESTIONS about a case long after the first headlines hit.
At the top of the article, Banville writes “little has been said about the murder of Delphine Farmer…” so I’ll point out that some of the “little” that WAS said was said by ME, in this post, and this one, which I wrote two months after the murder, trying to point out HOW LITTLE INFO had been released by the Sheriff’s Office. Oh, and I’ve also written about Jule Banville when her podcast got a bunch of accolades because I know someone she interviewed, but I’ll leave it at that (it’s a touchy topic).
Also at the start of the article, it’s clearly established that this was the ONLY murder investigation handled by the Sheriff’s Office ALL YEAR, so what gives? Maybe someone should ask Sheriff Petersen about this? That is, if he even exists. Since Sheriff Petersen NEVER talks to the media, or makes any public appearances that I’ve noticed (and I pay close attention), I’m really starting to wonder about this guy, but here he is being sworn in, so I guess that’s pretty good proof that he’s real.
Since it’s obvious Jeremiah Petersen is real, the next step is to get this “leader” to use his mouth to form words, words that could illuminate the public about what he’s actually doing as Sheriff of Missoula County. How about it, Jeremiah?
Maybe, when I’m back in Missoula in a few weeks, I’ll find Sheriff Petersen and ask him some questions myself, questions I doubt he’ll answer, especially when the Attorney General of Montana is up for reelection. Besides, I know what this “leader” would say, because it’s the same thing his Detectives say, and it’s this: talk to Jeannette.
As I was driving to the spot where the Branch Davidians were torched by the Federal Government, the idea to re-watch Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers popped into my head. The inclination was so strong that it overrode my attempt to watch a different movie, Tree Of Life, by Terrence Malick, which takes place in Texas. When I caught the smiley face in a scene at the beginning of the movie, it confirmed my hunch. What other images and references would emerge from this violent 1994 film?
Before we get into the movie itself, let’s talk about Woody and his dad, Charles, who was actually convicted, and served time, for killing people. From the link (emphasis mine):
Shortly after Harrelson was paroled in 1978, he and his then-wife, Jo Ann, were implicated in another murder. On May 29, 1979, U.S. district judge John H. Wood Jr. was shot dead in the parking lot outside his San Antonio, Texas, townhouse. Harrelson was convicted of killing Judge Wood after being hired by drug dealer Jamiel Chagra of El Paso, Texas. Wood—nicknamed “Maximum John” because of his reputation for handing down long sentences for drug offenses—was originally scheduled to have Chagra appear before him on the day of his murder, but the trial had been delayed.
Harrelson was apprehended when calls were made to the police saying he was firing a gun at imaginary FBI agents while on drugs. With the aid of an anonymous tip and a tape recording of a conversation that occurred during a visit from Joe Chagra to his brother Jamiel Chagra in prison, Harrelson was charged with Judge Wood’s murder. Harrelson claimed at trial that he did not kill Judge Wood, but merely took credit for it so he could claim a large payment from Chagra.
Before Natural Born Killers hit theaters, Woody Harrelson was primarily known for his goofy role on the show Cheers. Here’s an interesting interview from a Texas publication at the time where Woody talks about how much more he identifies with being a killer than the goofball.
From the link (emphasis mine):
Streit hasn’t seen Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, in which Woody gives an unforgettable performance as Mickey Knox, a charming rogue who, with his equally blood-crazed young wife, travels the country and brutally kills more than fifty people. Streit suspects that this is the story he had to tell. But now that the movie is out, things have gotten complicated. Woody is telling interviewers that he grew up brawling and carousing—behavior that people in Ohio don’t remember. In a bizarre case of life imitating art, he now claims that his own persona is much closer to that of Mickey Knox than that of Woody Boyd. “I think there’s many times that if I’d been holding a weapon, I’d have killed somebody,” he told Details magazine writer Rob Tannenbaum.
The carnage in the film kicks off with Woody’s character, Mickey, freeing his vicious soulmate by helping her murder her parents. Daddy, played by an appropriately disgusting looking Rodney Dangerfield, is DROWNED in the fish tank. Noted.
While we’re on the topic of fathers, both fictional and real, I’ll note that Charles Harrelson’s name has come up in the vast conspiracy to assassinate JFK. When you understand that Oliver Stone’s movie about the JFK assassination came out just three years before Natural Born Killers, it makes the choice to cast Woody even more curious.
Here’s some context on Daddy H. and his possible role in the “killing of the King” ritual (more on this later):
In September 1980, Harrelson surrendered to police after a six-hour standoff in which he was reportedly high on cocaine. During the standoff, he threatened suicide and stated that he had killed both Judge Wood and President John F. Kennedy. In a television interview after his arrest, Harrelson said: “At the same time I said I had killed the judge, I said I had killed Kennedy, which might give you an idea to the state of my mind at the time.” He said that the statements made during the standoff were “an effort to elongate my life.”
Joseph Chagra later testified during Harrelson’s trial that Harrelson claimed to have shot Kennedy and drew maps to show where he was hiding during the assassination. Chagra said that he did not believe Harrelson’s claim, and the AP reported that the FBI “apparently discounted any involvement by Harrelson in the Kennedy assassination.”[24] According to Jim Marrs’ 1989 book Crossfire, Harrelson is believed to be the youngest and tallest of the “three tramps” by many conspiracy theorists. Marrs stated that Harrelson was involved “with criminals connected to intelligence agencies and the military” and suggested that he was connected to Jack Ruby through Russell Douglas Matthews, a third party with links to organized crime who was known to both Harrelson and Ruby.
With this context in mind, it won’t be surprising when I tell you that there is a Jack Ruby reference in the movie, and Jack Ruby gets me thinking about another interesting REAL life character, Dr. Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West. Why is West important? He’s important because he pops up EVERYWHERE, like talking to Jack Ruby AND Timothy McVeigh, in his official capacity as a government psychiatric mind-fucker.
Oh, and he got an early start in the field of KILLING by dosing an elephant to death with LSD at a zoo in Oklahoma City. From the link:
One of the more unusual incidents in West’s career took place in August 1962. He and two co-workers attempted to investigate the phenomenon of musth in elephants by dosing Tusko, a bull elephant at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, with LSD. They expected that the drug would trigger a state similar to musth; instead, the animal began to have seizures 5 minutes after LSD was administered. Beginning twenty minutes later, West and his colleagues administered the antipsychotic promazine hydrochloride; they injected a total of 2800 mg over 11 minutes. This large promazine dose was not effective and may have contributed to the animal’s death. It died an hour and 40 minutes after the LSD was given.
Since I got the idea to watch this movie while driving to the siege location outside Waco, I’ll note the very odd fact that Timothy McVeigh was pictured selling bumperstickers DURING the siege. Isn’t that curious?
And here’s my picture, which I took through a closed gate, despite the posted hours indicating the area should have been open.
Is the siege referenced in the movie? Yep, it sure is–at the end, during a montage of real events, the structure at Mt. Carmel is shown in flames. Noted.
The montage also has a few clips of something that caught my attention, and that’s the conciliatory comments made by Rodney King, except you don’t get to hear the entire “CAN’T WE ALL ALL JUST GET ALONG?” because Stone cuts the clip before Rodney King finishes his statement. Why did Stone make this decision? I have an idea, and it correlates with the theory that JFK’s assassination was a Masonic ritual, which you can read more about here.
So, what’s the idea Stone might be trying to communicate here?
The message starts coming into focus when Wayne Gale (played by Robert Downey Jr.) is discussing serial killer tv ratings–putting the popularity of Mickey and Mallory’s fictional carnage ahead of the clown (Gacy) and the charmer (Bundy). And Charlie? Nope, Manson beats out our FATED killing couple, to which Mickey says, IT’S PRETTY HARD TO BEAT THE KING
I think one could say the message is this: the benevolent King has been replaced with a crazed cult leader who was in a stone’s throw of someone you should know is going to pop again, and that’s our MIND FUCKER friend, Jolly West.
Here’s a screenshot of an excerpt (PDF) from Tom O’Neil’s brilliant book, Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties (emphasis mine):
Well, I’d say that’s pretty damn close. Kind of like going to a club called Austin’s, on Austin street, and wondering if anyone else in that place understands how this sign could be interpreted:
What else do I look for when rewatching movies like Natural Born Killers? It’s say rabbit imagery, but in this case we have Mickey going full Donnie Darko talking about “Mr. Rabbit”, like making this creepy and cryptic statement in his interview with Wayne Gale: “Mr. Rabbit says the moment of realization is worth a thousand prayers…“
What else did I find noteworthy? Let’s see, both Toms, Sizemore and Lee Jones, play characters from Texas, with Sizemore’s character describing how his mother was killed by Charles Whitman. Here’s context if you need a refresher on this mass murderer (emphasis mine):
The University of Texas tower shooting was an act of mass murder which occurred on August 1, 1966, at the University of Texas at Austin. The perpetrator, 25-year-old Marine veteran Charles Whitman, indiscriminately fired at members of the public both within the Main Building tower and from the tower’s observation deck. He shot and killed 15 people.
All these REAL world references in a fictional narrative (script was written by Quentin Tarantino, though he later washed his hands of the movie, hmmm) is a conscious decision to blur the lines of what’s real and what’s not, and guess what? This is a tactic used by predators. Don’t believe me? Just look at the KING of the jungle (the one on the left):
But don’t take my word for it, take SCIENCE! From the link:
A tiger’s intimidating roar has the power to paralyze the animal that hears it and that even includes experienced human trainers. Elizabeth von Muggenthaler, a bioacoustician from the Fauna Communications Research Institute in North Carolina, presented her research at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in Newport Beach, California on December 7. Bioacoustics is the study of the frequency or pitch, loudness, and duration of animal sounds to learn about an animal’s behavior. At the meeting, von Muggenthaler discussed her work analyzing the frequency of tiger sounds to better understand the part of a tiger’s roar that we can feel, but can’t hear.
Another animal I’d like to spend more time digging into is the rattlesnake and its role in providing venom, the element that weaken Mickey and Mallory, leading to their temporary incarceration, but for now I’ll say an obnoxious podcast episode where this dude kept calling Jesus a pederast mentioned venom and other drugs as a part of the MYSTERY inspiring pre-Christians back in the day. Ok then.
The BIG INTERVIEW that precludes the prison riot is all set to take place LIVE after the Super Bowl, a Super Bowl won by the DALLAS Cowboys, I might add. Funny. And there’s some Monarch butterflies flashed at some point, of course. And Yoga is mentioned by Mickey, along with Wayne Gale, pre-interview prep, making a weird reference to some charity benefit for “homeless transsexual Veterans. Ok then.
A few more things and we’re almost done. The cut in the interview to a Coca Cola commercial featuring POLAR BEARS hits very differently with True Detective’s new season having, of course, a weird one-eyed Polar Bear in it. There’s also Wayne Gale screaming I KNOW BILL CLINTON to prolong his life, which ultimately ends in his OMMMMMM after being asked by Mickey if he believes in reincarnation. Noted.
But how do Mickey and Mallory plan on DISAPPEARING? Mallory starts answering that question, posed by Wayne Gale, with something about an “underground railroad”, but Mickey quickly covers her mouth to keep her from saying anything more. Well isn’t that interesting? Kind of makes me think of this guy, who has a Space X facility VERY close to Waco.
I’m sure I could say more, but this is already quite a post, and I have a song to share. We’ll save the dueling William Cowpers for another day. Enjoy!
Yep, after realizing the absurd synchronicities in Miss Congeniality, which led me into a name-associating doozy of a post, I was confronted with a DELUXE edition of that damn movie sitting right next to a Philip K. Dick book at one of the MANY Half-Priced Books I have visited on my travels.
PKD used “2-3-74” as shorthand for the experiences he had in 1974, experiences he spent the rest of his life trying to understand. I am using one3twenty in much the same way. So, yes, this pairing at a bookstore really fucked with me. Then, thanks to the following headline, I was reminded of something happening back in Missoula this weekend. Here’s the headline:
From the link:
Playwright Victoria Stewart wrote a stage show that addressed the complex man himself, along with his complicated questions in “800 Words: The Transmigration of Philip K. Dick.”
An independent production is coming here through a new company, A Quantum Dream, led by actor-director Reggie Herbert, in the Show Room at the Zootown Arts Community Center.
How funny is this? It’s almost more funny than I can find words to describe. I mean, the Zootown Arts Community Center is the PERFECT venue, since they used to take my money for rent until they realized that MY reporting on “reality” didn’t jive with their WOKE ambitions (I report on euthanized and executed black men in Missoula, and that makes them sad).
Here’s more (emphasis mine):
In 1974, Dick had a kind of otherworldly experience in which he believed other beings were piping information directly into his brain, which affected him until his death in 1982 at age 53.
“I was convinced that I just had to do this play — it had all of the elements that I liked, but also it investigated the scenes that the titular author explores in their work, but also relates them to us as audience members,” he said.
He also admired Stewart’s approach to Dick as a person — her script doesn’t engage in hero worship or make him out to be a great man. (Dick struggled with drug abuse and was married many times over.)
The characters include ones based on real people, such as his ex-wife Tessa (Erin Lee Agner) and the great science fiction author Stanislaw Lem (Timothy Ballard). The truth behind other figures is fuzzier — Dick did claim to have interactions with the FBI, so an agent appears in the play (also Ballard).
Was I blindsided by this low-vision visionary and his desire to bring his interpretation of Dick to a Missoula stage? No, I actually called up this director before I left Missoula and gave him just the slightest peek into my version of 2-3-74, and he gave me a peek into his sense that Dick’s brain was just stroking out and nothing more. Did I mention this director can’t see well?
A University of Montana graduate with a bachelor’s and a master’s in theater, Herbert said one of his upstart troupe’s goals is to bring “meaningful, challenging art” to the community.
Herbert, who is blind/low vision, also built accessibility into their productions — this one will be presented with live audio description at all performances, and open captions on Friday and Sunday evening.
“I would also like to continue to hold our community to a higher standard when it comes to accessibility and the arts,” he said.
Why am I making this out to be something? Because in my fucked up reality, it is something. You see (no pun intended) I actually saw someone who is blind recently, and they were putting on a blindfold on someone else, like they were training them to be blind or something, and that seemed weird until it came up in conversation that AUSTIN has a school for the blind. No, am NOT fucking kidding you.
Before I tell you what I see, you should know Waco’s popular branding has been around since 1985, when Carol Perry created the “Flying W“. Since my eyes interpreted this symbol as an upside-down 9/11–and since I stumbled onto a Masonic party weekend in Waco last week–I thought this might be significant.
With the synchronicity work I’m doing, name-association can help inform me on the more ethereal connections that are meaningful to me, but not necessarily to others, like the name PERRY, which I associate with Johnny Lee Perry, a young black man shot in the back by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office just two weeks after I published video footage of Perry near the homeless shelter where he allegedly assaulted Sean Stevenson on January 3rd, 2020.
Now, this name-association thing can get absurd real quick, so let’s take a look at how my first name (Travis) and middle name (William) are bouncing around, like the politician by the name of PERRY TRAVIS, who I saw a sign for in WILLIAMson County, which is right on top of TRAVIS County. Isn’t this fun?
It gets even MORE fun when you realize the “Flying W” symbol for the city of Waco replaced “Brazos Bill/Waco Will”. From the above link (emphasis mine):
Beginning in the 1950s, Brazos Bill was the icon people associated with Waco. He was a cheery little buckaroo, who was more of an ambassador or mascot. You could find him printed on city pamphlets and notifications. Then sometime shortly after, Brazos Bill became a Waco Will, a tiny cowboy who wore a 10-gallon Stetson embellished with a “W”, and had boots and a buckle to match. But these guys didn’t stick around for too long says Larry Holze. Holze is the current communications officer for the City of Waco. He says for him the flying W is as familiar as McDonald’s golden arches.
“Bottom line, if everyone understands what a logo is, in almost a nanosecond of seeing it, you say,‘oh that’s the city of Waco logo,’” Holze says.
If I had time to unpack this, I would, but for now I suggest considering what a sigil is because that is part of what’s going on here, sigil work. Now, let’s move on to Miss Congeniality, and the BRAZOS connection I just made.
To understand how significantly the movie Miss Congeniality fucked with me, read this. If you don’t feel like clicking, here’s the short of it: it wasn’t just a Montana/Texas connection, it was a Missoula/Austin connection, which is absolutely nuts, considering I’ve been driving from Missoula to fucking Austin.
I had caught scenes from this movie while staying at a hotel in Waco, where the BRAZOS river flows. Since I was planning on going to Austin the following day, I decided to make the fancy hotel where scenes from the movies were filmed my first stop. And guess where the Driskill Hotel is located in Austin? That’s right, the intersection of 6th and BRAZOS street.
I used all my charm to score a free hotel room at the Driskill, but, alas, the ladies weren’t swayed by my suggestion that my writing was worth comp’ing me a free night, so instead I impressed them with my sudden interest in Sandra Bullock’s depiction of a smart, unfeminine FBI agent, then went looking for what history might tell me about my own research, and sure enough I had a little fun with name-association.
Before I get to the name, I should explain that I’ve got an idea for a documentary brewing, but I don’t want to say too much about it yet. What I will say is that I’ve been thinking more and more about MINERAL County, in Montana, and the cast of characters I’ve become familiar with, like Wally Congdon, a County Attorney who is ALSO a cattle man prone to feeding his HIGHlander cows Cannabis. So that’s probably why the history of the Driskill made me think of old Wally and his tasty moo-moos.
Jesse Driskill, a successful cattle baron, had moved to Texas from Missouri in 1849. Flush with cash from his service to the Confederate Army, to which he supplied beef throughout the Civil War, he decided to diversify by constructing a grand hotel in Austin. In 1884, Driskill purchased land at the corner of 6th and Brazos for $7,500 and announced his plans for the hotel.
The name, though, that really stood out to me is the first name of the architect who designed the Driskill. Why? Because it’s the same name as the last name of the family who has a BIG influence on the going-ons in Mineral County, and beyond, and that name is JASPER.
Now, should I take this post into REALLY CRAZY territory? Why not? I’ve been sitting on this weird connection ever since speaking with the mother of Cameron Collin, a Canadian man who came to Eastern Montana for a wedding in 2018 and ended up dead. Here’s an article from the AP:
A preliminary autopsy report indicates a Canadian man who went missing after attending a friend’s bachelor party in Montana drowned in a creek.
Yellowstone County officials say no foul play was suspected in the death of 37-year-old Cameron Collin of Airdrie, Alberta.
His body was found Saturday in Pryor Creek, south of Billings, not far from where he was last seen.
I reached out to Marion, Cameron’s mother, because her son’s case is considered to be a SMILEY FACE case, fitting the pattern of young men who go missing, then show up dead in water. Here’s a better summary of the theory from the Wikipedia link (emphasis mine):
The smiley face murder theory (also known as the smiley face murders, smiley face killings, and smiley face gang) is a theory advanced by retired New York City detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, as well as Dr. Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice professor and gang expert at St. Cloud State University. It alleges that 45 young men found dead in bodies of water across several Midwestern American states from the late 1990s to the 2010s did not accidentally drown, as concluded by law enforcement agencies, but were victims of a serial killer or killers.
The term “smiley face” became connected to the alleged murders when it was made public that the police had discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases. Gannon wrote a textbook case study on the subject titled “Case Studies in Drowning Forensics.” The response of law enforcement investigators and other experts has been largely skeptical.
Hmmm, I thought, do I know anyone in law enforcement who may help shed some light on this case? Maybe a former Sheriff of Mineral County who currently works as a private investigator in Billings, Montana? If you’re not sure who I am referring to, here’s an excerpt from the second link for a more explicit clue (emphasis mine):
I reached out to Jim Terry on November 28th by texting him a question about whether or not he knew the former Sheriff of Mineral County, Mike Toth, BEFORE Rebekah Barsotti went missing. He called me back and explained how he knew OF Mike Toth, since they both had PI businesses and reality tv show aspirations. Isn’t that interesting? It gets better.
After telling me unlicensed PIs can only do work on missing persons cases, Jim boasted about STILL working with Rebekah Barsotti’s family on a different legal matter, one that has nothing to do with a missing persons case. No, this ongoing legal matter has to do with alleged harassment, and the question Jim Terry is helping Rebekah’s family answer is WHO might be doing the anonymous harassing by tracking the IP address.
Did Jim Terry tell me the results of his investigation? He did. Was that a smart thing for Jim Terry to do? That depends. If Jim Terry knows the grief industry better than I do, which I think he does, then this might indeed be a smart move for a “PI” who likes using as much abusive language as possible when he does his PI thing for his clients.
Yes, that’s right, I called up PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR and former Sheriff, Mike Toth, earlier today because–and here’s the kicker–Mike WAS HIRED BY CAMERON’S MOTHER to find her missing son after he went missing in 2018. What are the chances?
After jogging Mike’s memory, he confirmed that he was hired to find “that Canadian guy” by Marion, but then he seemed to get a little testy as I explained the “Smiley Face Killer theory”, which Mike said he had never heard of. “I’m not in law enforcement anymore,” Mike told me, like that was a viable excuse for being clueless about this pattern of death that Marion has come to believe was a factor in her son’s death MURDER.
“Yes,” I acknowledged, “but you’re still in the business of investigating things, so aren’t you glad you aren’t clueless anymore about this possibility?” I didn’t wait for an expression of gratitude to tell Toth “you’re welcome” before moving on to a different line of questioning, which REALLY made Mike agitated, since he ultimately hung up on me.
What’s the matter, Mike, aren’t you proud of the work your Missoula County Deputy referral, David Kunzelman, did after Missoula’s current Sheriff, Jeremiah Petersen, sent him your way, despite the fact he was caught cheating on a law enforcement test?
What else did Mike and I talk about? We talked about coroner’s, and the critical role they play in determining MANNER and CAUSE of death, and we talked about a certain famous Detective I’m trying to make a fan club for.
Fame and enforcing the law are intimately intertwined. Remember Eliot Ness? He took on Al Capone, so of course his name is fairly well known, unlike Arthur Roderick, who I guarantee you NO ONE knows. So who is this dude, and why am I mentioning his name? Well, I’m pretty sure this Arthur Roderick is the same guy involved the Ruby Ridge tragedy. Here’s Art’s bio from IMDb (first link):
Art’s career in local and federal law enforcement spans almost 40 years. He served 25 of those years in the U.S. Marshals, retiring in 2008 as Assistant Director for Investigations, Senior Executive Service (SES), and formerly, as the Chief of Staff.
Upon retiring from the U. S. Marshals, Art served as Deputy Director for Operations for the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice.
From June of 2015 to 2020, Art became a familiar face to millions as CNN’s & Court TV’s on-air Law Enforcement Analyst. Prior to CNN & Court TV, he spent seven years as the Law Enforcement Policy Advisor and Deputy Assistant Director assigned to Washington, D.C. Operations with Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC). He represented the FLETC Director as liaison to DHS Headquarters, Congress, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and was the International Liaison for DHS to the National Security Council Staff, Department of Justice and other federal agencies.
During his long and distinguished career, Art has appeared on numerous law enforcement programs including multiple episodes of “America’s Most Wanted” & “Unsolved Mysteries”. In 2015, Art executive produced and starred in The History Channel’s award nominated Special “Alcatraz; Search for the Truth” and its follow-up Special “Alcatraz; The Lost Evidence” in 2018. Most recently, Art executive produced and starred in NBC/Oxygen Network’s highly rated 6-part investigative series “The Disappearance of Maura Murray” and continues to work with many networks including History Channel, Science Channel, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel and the Travel Channel. Art has a slate of highly anticipated projects in development for television, film and digital streaming media. Art also appeared as himself in the History Channel two-hour special “History’s Greatest Mysteries: The Escape of John Wilkes Booth” which aired in December of 2020.
And here is Art’s testimony about shooting Randy Weaver’s dog (second link):
I wasn’t looking into Federal agencies and their involvement in the Ruby Ridge fuck up (or was it?) just because Miss Congeniality inspired me to think FEDS. No, it was ALSO a great podcast episode, perhaps their last, from Debra Gets Red Pilled. This episode–which I listened to sitting in my box truck at Lake Whitney, outside Waco–reminded me of the connections between Ruby Ridge and Waco, like the sniper, Lon Horiuchi, who took shots at BOTH locations, and how BOTH of these incidents led, we are told, to Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing.
And the Missoula connection to all this? It’s vague, because it’s from a brief conversation I had many years ago, while working at the Poverello Center’s old location, in Downtown Missoula. I remember being tasked with assessing a possible donation of office supplies at a downtown building that used to house a majority of the Forrest Service’s Region 1 staff.
When I entered the building I was surprised at how much security they had, like I was boarding a plane or something. Since I’m naturally curious and not afraid to ask WTF, I inquired about what seemed like safety overkill for Forrest Service offices. I was told that, post-OKC bombing, this building had been identified as a potential target of McVeigh’s because of someone who worked there, who I think I remember being told was involved in the Ruby Ridge incident, though I can’t say for certain, all these years later. Despite searching, I haven’t figured out WHO could have been McVeigh’s potential target in Missoula.
Why could this be important? Well, maybe because my coverage of the Rebekah Barsotti case, which has Mike Toth as ACTING SHERIFF (and I do mean acting) at the time, includes a little image of David Barsotti with someone who has a connection to Timothy McVeigh. Yeah, shit.
To accompany this image, I suggest checking out this link for more information, information that includes this:
Here is the untold story of Steven Barry, drawn from this author’s role in an Army investigation and from numerous other sources. It shows that confidential Army information has been published in The Resister, a periodical once read by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; that Barry received a career-ending reprimand as a result of his activities and, at one point, was a target of both federal and military criminal investigations; and that The Resister boasted of Special Forces members illegally defying orders in Haiti by helping to arm anti-democratic forces. It describes how U.S. military officials sidelined Congress and allowed Barry to remain in the military despite clear evidence of his extremism.
And it explains how The Resister, which today has a circulation of almost 2,500, was helped immeasurably by its intimate relationship with Soldier of Fortune, a magazine aimed at mercenaries and military men that enjoys a circulation of 100,000.
Isn’t all this quite curious? There’s more, but I’ve got to digest some new information first before sharing, so stay tuned. And remember to keep an eye on ONE3TWENTY for additional travel writing as this weird journey continues.
Until this weekend I had no clue about the Masonic significance of Waco, Texas, but the impressive building behind me has quite the history, which I touch on in this post at the new blog space, so check it out.
My travels have already been quite productive, but I have some very ambitious ideas I’m trying to develop, so I need to get to work and see who might be able to help me put the needed components together for my narrative project.
As I work on that, here’s a tune I wrote for the Masons–may they continue to do a wonderful job bringing joy and enlightenment to humanity!
